Halfway to the track tonight it suddenly occurred to me that attempting to ride without pedals would not be terribly successful. So I ended up arriving at my traditional time of Late, with a hurried couple of laps and a powerjump before the frivolities started in earnest.
First up - I really need a 96" for Blackburn. I rode 92" this afternoon, except for the sprint at the end on 86", and it feels a little too small. 99" on Blackburn is still probably a little large for me when there's wind (ie: usually) and 96" is kinda in the middle there. Have to order a 50t... I know I said I was going to do that already, but I haven't had a chance to budget - and with Christmas coming up, budgetting is a scary, scary thing...
Anyway, started off with a couple of 'paired' Flying 200s, in threes. I lead out the first one, and... that's about all I know. Noone came past. Garmin tells me the max was 52.8, but I forgot to turn the GPS off, so it also tells me I did a lot of riding in the carpark, playground and neighbouring ovals so I don't think I'll pay much attention to it. Especially since I also apparently recorded a cadence of 237.
Second 200 I was in the second spot, and spent the last 50 metres or so before the jump trying to avoid the wheel in front - I kept thinking it was jumping, jumping, jumping... in the end the jump came just a bit before the 200 line, so didn't really have a chance to drop the wheel and so on. Instead I let a little gap open to run in to and around, and that worked well enough. I dropped back down in to the lane and eased up coming to the line, only to hear a last-minute rush on my outside as the rider in third closed in. I held him off, and so won the adulation of crickets and balloons everywhere.
Next up we were practising a common move at Blackburn - jumping from the exit of corner 4 with about 350m to go. First one went fine, though I could hear a strange clicking sound coming from underneath me somewhere by the end. Sensibly, I ignored it and just lay my bike down in between efforts, before realising during the wind-up for the next that it was my cadence magnet hitting the sensor - I must have pulled the wheel ever so slightly in my previous matchup. This time I was against Chris, who out-jumped me down the straight and then refused to stop pedalling so that I could get back around him. After getting off the bike I noticed that the tyre was actually rubbing - not quite enough to drag, but enough that it couldn't be spun more than half a revolution.
So I fixed that, changed gears, and rocked back in for another sprint against Nic - we were, of course, both entirely spent. This time though I managed to actually jump out of turn two, pull ahead of him down the back straight and drop in to the lane to take the win, which was nice - I'd been telling myself that I wasn't going to do what I did last week and simply give in to feeling tired, but to go as hard as possible anyway, so pleased that I managed that.
I also managed, on every jump but one, to pull my left cleat out of the pedal - thank FSM for straps. Not sure an OS delivery will get here in time for this weekend, so might have to pay double and source that one locally...
Brief stats and humorous map here.
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